


seven for a secret

by orphan_account



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Thieves, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 08:40:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You cut your hair,” TK says the second time they meet, voice heavy with disappointment.TK is a lieutenant to the King of Thieves. Nolan is the son of a  Duke. Things go about as well as you'd imagine.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 13
Kudos: 247





	seven for a secret

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a Regency-like era. Romance Novel Regency (TM). Title from the nursery rhyme. Apologies for any grammar issues. Enjoy!

Nolan wakes to a gust of cold air through the quietly opened window, a soft shuffle in the dark, and then a hot body pushing under the covers. He starts to turn, eyes searching in the dark, when a strong arm wraps around his chest and TK says, “go to sleep, _your grace_.” Nolan does as he’s bid.

*

Giroux is the King of Thieves, born of the streets, a killer and scoundrel, a good hand at the card table, and a close personal friend of the Marquis Simmonds. Nolan, nineteen, in town for the first time, and given strict instructions to _fall in with the right people_ by his mother, the Duchess, joins the Most Honorable Marquis when invited and does his best not to embarrass himself with the hunting partners of the King. It is excruciating. 

The card game is itself not too bad. He has steady nerves and a face that doesn’t give his hand away, a fair head for the strategy, but men don’t sit at these tables to play, they do it to talk. The man seated to his left has no trouble with the arrangement of attention, constantly dipping his cards too far forward, jostling the table as he laughs and jokes and makes more noise than Nolan has in his entire life.

TK is his name, and he’d come in with Giroux’s party, a lieutenant to the King of Thieves, Nolan will later learn, but all he sees now is a man much his own age who makes himself at home with some of the richest men of the realm. He watches, from the corner of his eye, as TK gestures, the lines of his face already deeply worn by laughter, eyes dark even in joy, his facial hair tragic, and suddenly, bitterly wants his attention. He turns his gaze sharply back to his cards.

“Are there secrets written there, I wonder, to keep your focus so?” TK says, voice quieter and much closer. Nolan flushes hard, caught out in some way, but turns to meets his gaze evenly.

“Maybe if you looked at your own hand occasionally you’d know.”

TK laughs, full-bodied. Nolan tucks his hair behind his ears, looks down.

*

The Duchy of Winnipeg by landmass alone is the largest in the Kingdom. Much of it is too far north for farming, and too sparsely populated for less agrarian industry. It’s wardens, the Patricks, have always been loyal, if unimportant, servants to the Crown and Nolan had never given his inheritance much thought beyond a vague thought to do well by his people and keep to his father’s counsel. To Town and the Court he had given even less attention.

It is almost shocking to find himself, and more pressingly his sisters, nearing a marrying age, but he is a dutiful heir and when his mother bids so, he makes the necessary arrangements: has the house in Town opened, servants hired, and makes his presence known in all the right circles. He goes riding with school friends, attends the appropriate amount of dinners and balls for an eligible bachelor, and readies himself to chaperone his sisters in the coming years. He knows his mother means for him to find a lady of some standing to marry, knows that she hopes she will not have to intercede. Her own marriage was, after all, a love match and she is tender-hearted enough to hope for the same for her children. Nolan does not think about her hopes. 

*

“You cut your hair,” TK says the second time they meet, voice heavy with disappointment. The uneven line of his mouth is pressed thin and Nolan is possessed with the mad thought to push his hand against it, lay his fingers heavy on TK’s tongue, here in the center of Simmond’s club. He doesn’t know why he’s been invited back, but is certain laying hands on another man would ensure no such future invitations.

He digs his nails into his palm instead, says in a voice as dry as he can manage, “it wasn’t fashionable.”

TK grins, ridiculous and too bright, “it looked good.” He reaches his hand out and up, then laughs, tucking his palms behind himself, “you look good.”

“I’ll grow it again, just for you,” and what started as a joke in his mouth comes out too sincere, a half of a promise and more. TK stares at him for a long moment, the humor not leaving his face but the stillness of his frame contrary to everything Nolan has seen of him so far.

Giroux breaks the silence, clapping them both on the shoulder, “young Patrick, here to divest us of our coins again?” a laugh in his voice, and Nolan flushes. TK is still looking at him.

They sit side by side at the table again, and TK isn’t quiet, not by any measure, but each time Nolan dares to look up he finds him looking back. His palms itch, his focus wanders, he finds himself losing every hand and not caring.

At the end of the night, when the men have been heavily at their cups and those who are upright won’t remember much in the morning, TK lays a hot palm low on Nolan’s back and says into his ear, “I’d like that.”

*

It would be easier to understand if they had grown up together, more excusable perhaps. If TK had been one of the estate children and the young Lord had been allowed to run wild with his agemates, then at least there would be a certain narrative fidelity to where they find themselves now. Better men than the heir of the Duke of Winnipeg have found themselves tied up in childhood bonds, fallen prey to the snares of emotional loyalty. It would be almost excusable if this was the leftovers of some childhood game, but as it stands Nolan walked into this dalliance with eyes open wide.

TK may have been born a farmer’s son, could have played on the grounds of great houses with the sons of important men, but that was all far in his past when they met. The TK Nolan knows was always a rogue and Nolan welcomed him in as such.

*

There are ways a meeting could have been arranged between them. They have a socially established introduction and dozen mutual acquaintances between them. TK could have sent him a card, or an invitation to a club, or even approached him in the street. TK does none of these things.

Nolan had been discretely informed by other members of Simmond’s circle what and who Giroux is and, by extension, who TK is, but Lord Lindblom’s politic description of the network of pubs and brothels, pickpockets and mercenaries under the patronage of the shadowy King of Thieves pale in comparison to the reality of TK breaking in through his bedroom window.

So late at night that it is morning, all the servants long in bed, and Nolan is only awake because he is always awake now, kept up hot and feverish by crooked smiles and a few words of not quite flirtation. He’s turning in bed again when the window starts to open, and in a burst of stupidity he grasps for the still lit candle, thinking to throw it, when TK’s head emerges from the heavy drapes. They stare at one another, TK’s whole face lit with mischief, “your grace,” he breathes out. Then turns to shut the window and put the drapes right.

“That’s not the proper address,” Nolan says, and flushes when TK turns with a new humor in his eyes.

He is naked in his bed, having shamefully dirtied and discarded his sleep shirt hours earlier. He settles the candle back on the nightstand as TK slinks across the room, turns to extinguish the flame and is stopped. In the full light, TK draws back the bedclothes, raising an eyebrow at his bare flesh, and settles himself in Nolan’s lap, still fully clothed. 

“And what shall I call you?” he asks, a long, thorough kiss later.

“What?” Nolan has taken leave of his senses, Nolan knocked over the candle and is on fire, his whole body hot, flushing blood across his face, down his neck and down, down, down. TK’s eyes follow the path of his blush, considering, he shifts torturously and places his lips to Nolan’s neck.

“My Lord?” a kiss to the collarbone. “Sweetheart,” lips and tongue pressed over sternum. “Baby,” more teeth than lips at the navel.

“Oh god,” Nolan says and TK laughs with his mouth full.

*

Nolan falls from his horse; it is not a good fall. (“You were thrown from you horse,” TK says later, irritated and stubborn but that is not how Nolan remembers it.) Rain slicked streets and lack of attention, the horse is lamed and Nolan lands badly and mostly on his head. Everything after that is flashes. Pain and bright lights and two men half carrying him into a carriage. His own house and bed, and then a stranger who he later learns is a doctor. TK, pale and angry, hair wet with rain.

Two months of darkened rooms, bland food, and an endless, ringing headache follow that. When Nolan emerges from convalescence, hungry and ashamed, he finds TK installed in a suite of rooms adjacent Nolan’s own, overseeing his health and unwilling to brook any argument to the prescribed treatments.

“It was fortunate Mister Konecny found you,” the housekeeper, the Duchess, and Giroux all separately explain to him later, though only Giroux with a darkly knowing humor.

Another full month passes, with TK showing no signs of a departure, before Nolan thinks to ask, “how did you find me so fast?” Nolan’s ill health is the excuse he gives for how long the question is in coming, but perhaps more truthfully it was a shameful pleasure at his presence that let him overlook the strangeness of its fact.

TK, uncharacteristically, blushes, but his mouth sets in a mulish line as he says, “I have you,” a long and terrible pause, “guarded.”

“Watched, you mean,” Nolan can’t help but say.

“Yes,” he says, looking fit to spit in the eye of God. Nolan takes his hand. 

*

TK buys him gifts. Small things at first: a silk neckcloth in the palest blue, a set of loaded dice, cheap clothes so he can walk with TK through the streets unnoticed, candies, and sweet rolls still hot from the bakers. Then progressively bigger: a silver chess set neither of them will ever play, a pocket watch heavily studied with diamonds, a new horse. It is the finest piece of horseflesh Nolan has laid eyes upon, a chestnut stallion TK has named Teak. Nolan pretends not to laugh.

“You know I am Duke’s son,” he tries to say once, when the gifts have grown extravagant.

“You don’t say.”

“That is, I mean to say, I have… my family has a great deal of wealth. There is no need–” He stops, unable to say it.

“No need?” TK asked, a smile soft on his face. He pressed his hands greedily against Nolan’s hot face, where he was failing to will down the flush these gifts always incited. “On the contrary, sweetheart, there is a great need.”

TK kissed him, open mouthed and wet, hands immediately seeking out the opening of his trousers and Nolan forgot his concerns.

*

TK comes to him sometimes with blood caked on his hands and splattered across his face. This too is a gift. Nolan has become adept at stealing through his own house as not to wake any servants, gathering water and clean cloth, washing TK’s hands and face in the quiet of the long night.

Nolan takes care to wash him clean first, divest him of clothes and weapons, and then he falls to his knees. It is a worship, but it is more than that. He never asks, and TK never answers, would never answer, but still this is a silencing.

It is not that Nolan does not want to hear what bloodies TK so, there is no fear in him and no disgust. Rather the opposite.

If he had been born anyone else, if he were not a Duke’s son with no brothers, if he loved his family less, if he could escape any part of his own destiny Nolan would walk with TK in all things. Would become his shadow and his partner. In any other life Nolan would be with him in violence and in peace, would fight and kill with him, would kill for him. The knowledge sits dense and sickening in the back of his throat. He chokes on it, he chokes on TK, he swallows and coughs, tears streaming down his face and goes back for more.

There is nothing in this world that will be equal to what he cannot give TK, so he will simply give him everything.

*

In the summer they go to the woods. First to the family seat, where TK plays respectable and charms the Duchess and Nolan’s sisters, all eager to meet the man who saved him, and then farther to a small estate in the north, the only part of the family holdings which is Nolan’s outright. There are no servants and few comforts, just the woods and the water, a small town a few miles away.

Nolan had been not concerned precisely, but hesitant to propose the trip, not knowing how willing TK would be to leave Giroux’s side and the city. TK was quick to agree, even criminals slow in the summer heat, but Nolan had not suspected that TK would take to the woods as he has. He was born in a world far closer to this one, than to his present life, Nolan knows, cannot help but have heard TK talk about the farm and his family a hundred times, but it is different to see. He grows dark and golden in the summer sun, grows quieter too, having no attention to draw to himself, having all of Nolan's already.

They lay side by side on the lake shore, on the floor of the forest, in bed, Nolan’s head pressed to TK’s heart and the days stretch like honey, but Nolan knows they are ending. Can feel it in his quickening pulse, in the dread that starts to creep into each sunrise.

“Would you stay with me here,” he asks, sun stupid and love sated, “forever?” TK kisses him, forever in a kiss.

“I would stay with you anywhere.” He looks up at the sky, orange and pink with the dying light, “but I do not think you would stay here, _your grace_,” he says, affection and reminder both.

Nolan is the heir any father would wish for. Loyal, disciplined, courteous. If all had gone to plan he would have done his duty, married well and continued the line, ensured the safety of the family lands and all those tenants who depended on the Patricks. If life had stretched out as it had always seemed it would, he would have left all the wild days of his youth, the follies he played out with boys at school where they belonged and never looked back. Personal predilections could and would be set aside by any dutiful heir.

All of that turned to so much dust when he met TK.

Nolan will never marry. His heirs will be the children of his sisters and he will bear the disappointment of his parents, and the wagging of titled tongues, and far, far worse and it will be a fairly struck bargain. Nolan will keep TK, until the last trumpet blast of destiny sounds, until the breath leaves his body, until TK doesn’t want him any longer. Gladly and selfishly, Nolan will keep him.


End file.
